Artist: Icona Pop
Album: This Is… Icona Pop
Genre: Pop
Label: Big Beat/WEA

In this rich boom time of young, creative, and exciting pop, difficult choices must be made. These are the real pop wars. Lady Gaga and Katy Perry are doing just fine; there are far more important questions to be asked. Which 2013 debut should be kept on blast, that of 21-year-old Brit Charli XCX or 16-year-old New Zealander Lorde? Should one chill dance to Scotland’s Chvrches or go full rave with Sweden’s Icona Pop? Is that new Sky Ferreira album going to be good, and, while we’re on the subject, is that young woman okay?

Those are only the most popular options, the collective tip of the iceberg. There’s only so much time in the day, and we must have our favorites and our repeat plays. Choosing is so difficult.

The wonderful thing about this Icona Pop debut – one of many wonderful things about it – is that the choice is more an instant, visceral reaction, an instant slamming-the-accelerator acceptance or stop sign rejection that pops into the brain as soon as the light show starts.

The worry with This Is… Icona Pop, meant to be the perfect debut title but instead sounding like a greatest hits disc, was whether “I Love It” (and, to a lesser extent, “Ready For the Weekend”) were flukes. Icona Pop are best at bangers (no hate, Miley), but an album full of nonstop party pop has to be fully enthralling and filler-free to work for so long. “I Love It” is fantastic; an album of “I Love It” knockoffs would be worse than no album at all.

Thirty-three minutes later, we’re all still dancing.

This is pure pop. Joyous, raucous, uncomplicated, fun. Caroline Hjelt and Aino Jawo wield singalong choruses like Louisville Sluggers, keep the tempo up like they’re in Crank, and party like… well, like superstars. The album was the perfect counter-programming to fellow September 24 release Nothing Was the Same. Somebody slip a copy of this to Drake.

Loving Icona Pop is the embracing of happiness and joy in life. Even when Hjelt and Jawo get (relatively) reflective and emotional, it’s with hips shaking and limbs flailing. They were able to meld a fair variety of emotions and driving forces with constant ragers to give an album that rarely lets up some perceived breathing room. It rages (“I Love It”). It celebrates besties in the convertible with the top down (“Girlfriend”). It’s a rockstar, and a fabulous one (“On A Roll”). It kisses you off with the album’s shortest, most carefree, and most fun track at the very end (“Then We Kiss”). It’s the Pringles of pop albums.

Icona Pop may not have the pure, raw talent of your Lordes, but there won’t be a more fun pop album released this year than This Is...

Rating: 8.5/10

Review written by: Tyler Hanan

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Tyler Hanan

Tyler raves about movies on the Let The Right Films In podcast. Listen to him make jokes over his beleaguered cohost Kayla St. Onge and their more qualified guests who deserve so much better at soundcloud.com/ltrfipod. Find him on Twitter @tylerhanan.

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